Tolstoy's Phoenix: From Method to Meaning in War and Peace

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments This book wasn't intended; it just happened-Dn and off, off and on, over nearly two decades. I was living on a sheep farm in the foothills of Mount Equinox in Manchester, Vermont, with my then-wife, Ann, and our seven children: haying in the summer, cidering in the fall, skiing all winter, making maple syrup in early spring, writing book reviews for the New York Times and short stories for a wide variety of journals and magazines. In 1978 Random House published my first-person novel, but I was having trouble getting started on the next one. I wanted to write it in the third person, so that I could use various characters' perceptions; but I didn't want to lose the intimacy intrinsic to the first-person telling method. So I turned to Tolstoy, to try and figure out how he had done it in 'Var and Peace-not only combined mobility with intimacy, but managed to universalize the particular without sacrificing particularity. And, almost incidentally, find out to what end he had combined them ... meaning what? In all the time it took me to come up with at least some of the answers to these questions, Professor Edwina Cruise oHVilliams College, then Mount Holyoke, continued to support my efforts: recommending reading material, critiquing my early drafts, discussing chapter continuity, lending (no, giving) constant encouragement. When I discovered what I thought was the connection between Tolstoy'S methods and his novel's meaning, Edwina had the Department of Russian at Mount Holyoke invite me to give a lecture on the subject. That was on April 2, 1984. My lecture bore the same title as this book, and it combined material now in chapters 3 and 4. A few years later, taking a Harvard graduate course on literary theory, taught by Sven Birkerts, I handed in a paper that Dr. Birkerts thought publishable , and that became my opening chapter. After such approval, I decided to bear down and finish the book, which I proceeded to do while getting my M.F.A. in Writing at Vermont College. While cutting and shaping the then voluminous sections into a sensible progression, I turned to four members of the M.F.A. fiction faculty for feedback: Bret Lott, Ellen Lesser, ix Acknowledgmellts Gladys Swan, and Sydney Lea. Bret and Ellen read chapters; Gladys read the entire work; Syd read parts. All made valuable comments, and Syd went further , suggesting that I send the manuscript to his friend and fonner faculty colleague at Dartmouth College, \Valter Arndt. Dr. Arndt liked it enough to recommend it to Susan Harris, editor-in-chief at Northwestern University Press ... which is how the typed pages eventually ended up in their present form, printed between covers. I am grateful to Susan, and also to Caryl Emerson, general editor of the Studies in Russian Literature and Theory series, for their support. In addition to Syd Lea and Walter Arndt, I would like to thank the following four for their generous efforts to get my material read by editors: George Core, Blair Fuller, Herbert Bix, and Jill Fox. Others who deserve my gratitude for their encouragement and/or commentary include David Blair, Nancy Shaw, Betsy McKenny, Marlene Dolitsky, Richard Melson, Jae Roosevelt , Pamela Post, Rebecca Martin Evarts, Krissi Yarnall, and my brother, Langdon Clay. For having endured much of the book's long gestation with bright eyes and an approving smile, I want to thank Ann Clay. Finally, I am especially gratefiJI to my daughter Elly, who-while shepherding her four childrentypeset , proofread, copyedited, and in many other ways orchestrated the typescript into final shape. x ...